Texas’s Fetal Burial Law Is Struck Down For Now, I Guess

In 2017, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature passed a law requiring hospitals and abortion clinics to arrange for the burial or cremation of fetal remains. The law was set to take effect next February, and would have required these funerary rights regardless of the patient’s personal wishes or beliefs, and regardless of whether the pregnancy ended in an abortion or a miscarriage.

The law is designed to shame women who get abortions, plain and simple. The Texas legislature has concocted some concern about preventing the remains from winding up in “landfills,” but they give up the game when they say this: